Dr. Anick Berard, at the University of Montreal in Quebec, said medications such as those which treat severe acne, anxiety and psychiatric drugs, antibiotics, and many drugs prescribed for heart disease and medical conditions “can and should be avoided” by women who are pregnant.
Standards of care at Greek mental hospitals are still so atrocious that the European Union has threatened to cut funding for social projects if the country does not clean up its act. “The system is in a state of reform, but I have to say that if patients are attached to their beds for hours or days, that’s totally unacceptable,” said Vladimir Spidla, the European Commissioner for Social Affairs. “For me it’s sad that this exists in the European Union.”
Dr. Brad Hagen, a clinical psychologist and faculty member at the University of Lethbridge, the reason for the skyrocketing rates of depression are a matter of heated debate. “Depending on how you look at it, depression either started becoming more common or recognized, or it became marketed,” says Hagen. Sales of antidepressant drugs worldwide are in the tens of billions of dollars each year. Dr. Hagen says the number of sales is actually quite “mindboggling.”
In the last decade or so, more than 500 people have undergone brain surgery for problems like depression, anxiety, Tourette’s syndrome, even obesity, most as a part of medical studies. In this country, at least one patient was left unable to feed or care for herself after botched surgery.
NAMI website: “The safest way to treat severe depression in a pregnant woman is probably electroconvulsive (ECT) therapy. Patients and families are sometimes frightened by the idea of ‘shock treatment,’ but in fact ECT is safer than antidepressant medication for a depressed pregnant woman. It can be used during any state of pregnancy, but is less risky after the first trimester.”
SHARE YOUR STORY/COMMENT: